Hi, I've been noticing that other sites are calling up images from my site by just using the file url. Stealing bandwidth I guess they call it. Is there any way to stop this from happening? I'd rather my files not be accessible from outside the site and I'm sure wikidot would rather not have people doing this. Anything that can be done?

Comments

That depends exactly what you want to do. If this is only one or two pictures or only occasionally, then you can just upload the picture again with a different name, change the page to reference the new file, and upload a new image with the old filename that contains a (polite) request not to deep-link images.

It should be possible for Wikidot to implement a feature where the referrer of a file request had to be a Wikidot server. So only Wikidot pages could contain images hosted on Wikidot. But it would have to be an option only, and you would have to interest them in implementing it.

If your interest was in copyright rather than bandwidth, then you have to get more clever with generating the image in Javascript and disabling the context menu and stuff. I don't think that would be easy on Wikidot, and you would probably end up with all images in an iframe surrounded by intricate script.

And always remember that the more tricky you get in preventing the bad-guys, the more innocent users you inconvenience by accident.

That depends exactly what you want to do. If this is only one or two pictures or only occasionally, then you can just upload the picture again with a different name, change the page to reference the new file, and upload a new image with the old filename that contains a (polite) request not to deep-link images."

That's a great idea.

It should be possible for Wikidot to implement a feature where the referrer of a file request had to be a Wikidot server. So only Wikidot pages could contain images hosted on Wikidot. But it would have to be an option only, and you would have to interest them in implementing it."

I would kind of think wikidot wouldn't want other sites making file requests. If they don't care I'm certainly not going to make it a mission :)

If your interest was in copyright rather than bandwidth, then you have to get more clever with generating the image in Javascript and disabling the context menu and stuff. I don't think that would be easy on Wikidot, and you would probably end up with all images in an iframe surrounded by intricate script.

No I'm not worried so much about copyright. People are free to use my images and of course any images that are already free to share. I use some licensed images but I clearly state the copyright. I hope that people will properly cite any of my images they use but I know that some people will and some people won't. I don't want to inconvenience the good guys, like you say.

Maybe I'm old fashioned but "deep linking" if that is what it is called, strikes me as extremely rude and I do not like being treated rudely, lol. If it's no big deal to wikidot I will use your suggestion if I notice this behavior again but I won't worry too much about it. Thanks, Rurwin.

The term "deep-linking" properly refers to any link that is below the top level of the site. eg bbc.co.uk/iplayer. Some sites get annoyed about people doing that even if it is a simple link to a page. Of course it is only with images that it causes bandwidth problems.

The one time I have been aware of this happening it was not a web-designer or site admin at fault. It was due to someone putting a picture in a forum post. Maybe that forum did not support file uploading, or maybe the poster was lazy. It just happened to be a very popular thread on a very popular forum.

I love links to my site I just would rather someone clicking on it actually take them to my site.

Yes I have had several forums do this already and being a long time forum user I know that people do this. Not just because the forum does not support images either but because people just simply don't know any better. I think I have heard of this referred to as "hotlinking" as well..I guess that is the same thing. The couple recent ones I was referring to were blogs. And all their images were "deeplinked", mine was just one among dozens.

After your input I got an idea that I've implemented. If I notice this happening I change the file name of the image and upload another image that basically promotes my own site and use the old file-name on that. Worked beautifully. Free advertising since most people never even look at their old pages once they've been posted a while.

I've heard of this thing where people do not want people linking to their site. I read the post you provided. I don't get it. I've heard also that google has been sued numerous times for similar reasons. It's beyond me. A link is like word of mouth..what business would not want word of mouth referalls? Not what I'm talking about at all of course.

I keep having people link directly to files on my site - they are not images, but they are about 2 MB zip files. Once, I saw that the site hotlinking the file also linked to my homepage - that I like.

But in order to punish those that don't I may do something similar to what rurwin suggested (thanks for the idea!)

Create a HTML file with a link to the page where they can get the file (not to the file directly)

Use the old file name for that.

Wikidot allows you to remove the extension or use a completely different extension when renaming files, because the MIME type is remembered so the type of file is not forgotten. That means I can serve a HTML document in the place of a link to a zip file (theoretically… I am about to try it).

Microsoft once used a hotlinked image on their blog. One that they didn't have permission to use. The image owner changed the image pointed by that URL to some nude act and that way this specific kind of art was accidentally promoted by Microsoft.